Cannie Shapiro 02 Certain Girls Read online

  "What is it?" I asked hopefully. "Do you wanna go make out in a stairwell?"

  "Let's take a walk." He snagged a few beef satay sticks and a plate from a passing waiter, added some raw vegetables and crackers, and led me up the staircase to the Signers' Hall, with life-size statues of the men who'd signed the Constitution.

  I leaned against Ben Franklin and took a look around. "You know what? Our country was founded by a bunch of short, short men."

  "Better nutrition these days," said Peter, setting his plate on a cocktail table by the railing and giving John Witherspoon a friendly slap on the back. "It's the secret to everything. And you're wearing heels."

  I pointed at George Washington. "Well, so is he. Hey, did Ben Franklin have VD, or was that someone else?"

  "Cannie," Peter said soberly. "We are in the presence of great men. Molded bronze replicas of great men. And you have to bring up venereal disease?"

  I squinted at Ben's biography, on a small rectangular plaque on the back of his chair. It made no mention of any nasty souvenirs he might have picked up during his years in Paris. History was a whitewash, I thought, crossing the floor and leaning over the railing to look down at the hired dancers, gyrating wildly as a specially constructed Studio 54 emblem descended from the ceiling (instead of sniffing cocaine, the man on the moon appeared to be reading from the Torah). "This party is insane," I said.

  "I've been thinking about something," Peter said, looking at me steadily over George Washington's wig.

  I hoisted myself up onto the stool in front of our cocktail table. "Joy's party?" Our daughter's bat mitzvah, and the party that would follow, were many months away but had already emerged as a hot topic around our house.

  "Not that." He took the seat across from me and looked at me sweetly, almost shyly, from underneath his long eyelashes.

  "Are you dying?" I inquired. Then I asked, "Can I have your beef stick?"

  Peter exhaled. His brown eyes crinkled in the corners and his teeth flashed briefly as he struggled not to smile.

  "Those weren't related questions. I'm very sympathetic," I assured him. "I'm just also very hungry. But don't worry. I'll do the whole devoted-wife-of-many-years thing. Hold your hand, sleep by your bedside, have your body stuffed and mounted, whatever you like."

  "Viking funeral," Peter said. "You know I want a Viking funeral. With flaming arrows and Wyclef Jean singing 'Many Rivers to Cross.'"

  "Right right right," I said. I had an entire file on my laptop labeled "Peter's Demise." "If Wyclef's busy, should I try for Pras?"

  Peter shrugged. "He could use the work, I guess."

  "Well, you think it over. I really don't want you haunting me from beyond the grave because I hired the wrong Fugee. And do you want the music before or after they set your corpse on fire?"

  "Before," he said, reclaiming his plate. "Once you light a corpse on fire, it's all downhill from there." He munched ruminatively on a carrot stick. "Maybe I could lie in state at the Apollo. Like James Brown."

  "You might have to release an album first, but I'll see what I can do. I know people. So what's up?" I raised my eyebrow in a knowing manner. "Do you want a threesome?"

  "No, I don't want a threesome!" he boomed. Peter has a very deep voice. It tends to carry. The three women in strapless gowns who'd wandered into the hall, presumably for some fresh air, stared at us. I gave them a sympathetic shrug and mouthed, Sorry.

  "I want..." He lowered his voice and stared at me, his dark brown eyes intent. Even with all the little businesses of ten years of marriage between us, the conversations about when to get the roof fixed and where to send Joy for summer camp, his gaze could still melt me and make me wish we were somewhere all alone...and that I really was as limber as a Romanian gymnast.

  "I want to have a baby," Peter said.

  "You want..." I felt my heart start pounding, and my velvet dress suddenly felt too tight. "Huh. Didn't see that coming. Really?"

  He nodded. "I want us to have a baby together."

  "Okay," I said slowly. This was not the first time the possibility of a baby had come up over the course of our marriage. There'd be a story about some talk-show host or country singer on the news, the proud mother of twins or triplets "born with the help of a surrogate," an expression that always made me roll my eyes. It would be like me saying that the oil in my car had been "changed with the help of a mechanic," as if I had something to do with it other than paying the bill. But if we were going to have a baby who was biologically our own, there'd need to be a third party involved. Joy had been born two months early, via emergency C-section, which had been followed by an emergency hysterectomy. There'd be no more babies for me. Peter knew this, of course, and even though he'd pointed out the pieces about surrogates, he'd never pushed it.

  Now, though, it looked like he was ready to push. "I'm fifty-one," he said.

  I turned away and read out loud from James McHenry's plaque: "'Physician, military aide, and politician.' And a very sharp dresser."

  Peter ignored me. "I'm getting older. Joy's growing up. And there might be possibilities. You might have viable eggs."

  I batted my eyelashes. "That is, hands down, the most romantic thing you've ever said to me."

  Peter took my hand, and his face was so open, so hopeful, so familiar and dear that I was sick with regret that my one shot at natural motherhood had come via my stoned jerk of an ex-boyfriend instead of with my husband. "Don't you ever think about it?" he asked.

  My eyelids started to prickle. "Well..." I shook my head and swallowed hard. "You know. Sometimes." Obviously I'd wondered. I'd daydreamed about a baby we'd make together, a sober little boy who'd look like Peter, with flashes of his dry humor, like heat lightning in the summer sky; one perfect little boy to go along with my perfect girl. But it was like dreaming about being in the Supremes, or winning a marathon, or, in my case, running a marathon: a fantasy for a lazy afternoon in the hammock, something to mull over while stuck on a runway or driving on the turnpike, nothing that would ever really happen.

  "We're so happy now," I said. "We have each other. We have Joy. And Joy needs us."

  "She's growing up," he said gently. "Our job now is to let her go."

  I freed my hand and turned away. Technically, it was true. With any other going-on-thirteen-year-old, I'd agree unconditionally. But Joy was a different story. She needed special attention because of who she was, the things she struggled with--her hearing, her reading--and because of who I'd been.

  "Our lives are wonderful, but everything's the same," he continued. "We live in the same house, we see the same people, we go to the Jersey shore every summer--"

  "You like it there!"

  "Things are good," he said. "But maybe they could be even better. It wouldn't kill us to try something new."

  "Back to threesomes," I said, half to myself.

  "I think we should at least take a look. See what's what." He pulled a business card out of his wallet and handed it to me. Dr. Stanley Neville, reproductive endocrinologist, offices on Spruce Street--in the same building, I noted ruefully, as the doctor who treated my recently diagnosed arthritis. "He can do an ultrasound of your ovaries."

  "Good times," I said, and gave him back the card. I thought of our lives, perfectly arranged, the three of us safe, cocooned from the world. My garden, after ten years of attention, was in full flower, with espaliered roses climbing the brick walls, hydrangeas with blue and violet blossoms as big as babies' heads. My house was just the way I'd always wanted it. Last month, seven years of searching had finally yielded the perfect green-and-gold antique grandfather clock that sat on top of the staircase and melodically bing-bonged the hours. Everything except for the tiny and no doubt fixable matter of Joy's grades was perfect.

  Peter touched my shoulder. "Whatever happens, whether this works out or not, our life is good just the way it is. I'm happy. You know that, don't you?"

  Beneath us, a parade of waiters and waitresses, in their bodysuits and bikinis, ex
ited the kitchen bearing salad plates. I nodded. My eyelids were still burning, and there was a lump in my throat, but I wasn't about to start bawling in the middle of the Constitution Center. I could only imagine the gossip that would start if Shari got wind of it. "Okay," I said.

  "Candace," he said fondly. "Please don't look so worried."

  "I'm not worried," I lied. He handed me his plate, but for one of the rare times in recent memory, I wasn't hungry at all. So I set it back on the table and followed him down the stairs, past the windows and the moon hanging high in the sky, flooding the lawn with its silvery light.

  TWO

  Todd plopped himself down on my bed and stared at me eagerly. "So what were you guys doing in there?" he asked.

  I pulled the bobby pins out of my hair, letting my curls tumble around my shoulders, smiling without saying a word.

  "We're your best friends," Todd pleaded. "James is our cousin. We can give you inside information. I think he's a hottie."

  Tamsin, in her sleeping bag on the floor, pursed her lips and noisily flipped the page of her book. Todd was still wearing his suit, but his sister had gotten out of her dress the minute my bedroom door was closed, and looked much happier in her Lord of the Rings night-shirt and her sweatpants, with her face scrubbed clean of the makeup her mother had made her wear and her freckles back in full force on her nose.

  "We didn't do anything," I lied as Frenchelle, my dog, hopped onto my bed and curled up like a Danish at my feet. The truth was, I'd danced with Todd and Tamsin's fifteen-year-old cousin, James, three times. Then James had offered me a sip of his drink, which had turned out to be a whiskey sour that his older brother had given him, and I'd said okay to that, too. Then he'd taken me into the darkened auditorium where they do the "Freedom Rising" multimedia presentation and pressed me against the carpeted wall, and we'd stood there in the darkness, him in his shirt and tie and me with his jacket draped over my shoulders, kissing like something out of a movie, or at least a music video. I'd worried a little when he started rubbing himself up and down against me, but when he put his hand on my breast, I just moved it away, and when he didn't put it back, I let myself relax. It was so dark in the auditorium that I could pretend he was anybody. At first I'd pretended that he was Dustin Tull the singer, and that had been good, and then I'd pretended that he was Duncan Brodkey, my crush from school, and that was even better, standing there in the darkness with James's thin lips pressing against mine so hard that I could feel the bumps of his teeth.

  You're so hot, he'd murmured in my ear, and that was the best thing of all, because I thought he believed it: that in that dress, for that night, it might actually have been true. Then one of James's hands had slid back to my chest, and he'd pinched me too hard. I'd pushed him away and said, I don't think so, in a scornful, almost snotty voice, and I had sounded exactly like Taryn Tupping, who is actually hot and the star of The Girls' Room on TV. It was just the kind of thing she'd say to a boy who'd gone too far, the exact words and tone that a real hot girl would use. James had stepped away from me immediately, and I thought he'd look angry, but he just looked as if it was what he expected--as if that was how hot girls were supposed to behave.

  "Spill, spill!" Todd chanted. I blushed, remembering it: the feeling of James's lips and his hands, and that respectful look on his face. But I didn't want to say anything because Tamsin hadn't kissed anyone yet, and if I did tell, Todd would pass the story along to everyone, probably starting with his mother.

  Frenchelle turned in a circle, then curled up again and started snoring as my mother made her way slowly up the stairs. I rolled over, hiding my face in my pillow as she paused, the way she always did, to admire the clock at the top of the staircase. "Shh," I said. "It's her."

  The three of us lay there, the silence broken only by the sound of Tamsin clicking her retainer in and out of her mouth, until I heard my mother turn around and head toward her bedroom. I rolled onto my back, stared at the ceiling, and began my litany. "Reasons I cannot stand my mother: one through ten."

  "Here we go," Tamsin muttered.

  "'Scuse me," said Todd, carrying his pajamas to the bathroom.

  I ignored them both. "One: her boobs."

  "They're not that bad," Tamsin said without looking up from the copy of Ghost World I'd gotten her for Chanukah, to replace the one she'd read until it had fallen apart. Todd came back in, barefoot in striped seersucker pajamas, smelling like benzoyl peroxide and mint toothpaste, his dark brown hair brushed up from his forehead, his lips and nose and the arch of his eyebrows identical to his sister's. Even though he's not into girls except as friends, this would probably be the last time Todd would be allowed to sleep over--Today I am a man, he'd said, making a face--but there was going to be a brunch at the Marmers' house the next morning. The caterers would arrive at six, and Mrs. Marmer had decided that the benefits of the twins getting a good night's rest outweighed the risks of a mixed-sex sleepover. "They're just...you know." Tamsin rolled onto her side. "Big."

  I sighed. Todd and Tamsin have been my best friends since kindergarten. We met the day Matthew Swatner started teasing me because of my hearing aids and calling me Machinehead. The two of them had plopped themselves down beside me at the sand table--Tamsin with her hair in pigtails tied with red ribbons, Todd in a red baseball cap--and told Matthew to leave me alone. Then Todd had given me his baseball cap to wear, and Tamsin had tied one of her ribbons around my wrist, and at snack time they'd sat on either side of me, glaring at Matthew, at anyone who stared. Your own personal Fruits of Islam, my mother had said when she'd seen them. I still don't know what she meant by that, but I know for sure that even after all our years together, Tamsin and Todd still don't get the deal of my mom.

  "Her chest is ridiculous," I said. "Do you know what size bra she wears? Thirty-six G."

  "G?" Todd repeated. "Is that a real size?"

  "Sort of. She has to order them online because the regular store doesn't have them."

  "Wow," said Tamsin, but she sounded respectful, not horrified, the way I'd been when I'd seen the tag on my mother's bra.

  "And she always wears clothes where you can see her chest!" I shook my head. "But that's probably not her fault. I mean, what's she going to wear so you can't see her chest?" I stared at the ceiling and told my friends the worst part. "And now I'm getting them, too."

  "You're lucky," Tamsin said, looking up from her book to gaze unhappily at her own chest. "Guys love big boobs."

  "Which is why our mom bought hers," Todd said.

  "She says I can get implants, too, when I'm sixteen," said Tamsin. "As if."

  I flushed, thinking of James again, who hadn't seemed bothered by my chest. "Amber Gross doesn't have big boobs," I said. "Amber Gross barely has any boobs at all."

  "Yeah, but she's Amber Gross." Out loud, it sounded stupid, but I knew exactly what Tamsin meant. In spite of her last name, which you'd think would be an automatic disqualifier, Amber Gross is the most popular girl in our grade. Amber Gross has chestnut-brown hair, straight and shiny as a satin curtain, and a twinkly smile that would make you think her braces are jewelry she had commissioned for her teeth. No zit would ever dare deface her skin. Her body is tiny and perfect, and her clothes are tiny and perfect, and she is going out with Martin Baker, who's on the J.V. soccer team even though he's only a seventh-grader. Best of all, most important, Amber can talk to anybody, parents or teachers or boys, and everything that comes out of her mouth--the words and the sound of the words--is always just right.

  I am the anti-Amber, the girl whose face you'd skip right over, the one who stands in the back row of class pictures, slouching, looking away; the one who smiles and nods at things she can't quite hear and hopes that will be good enough. I never know the right thing to say, not even in my own head, and half the time, if I do manage to say something, people ask me to speak up or repeat myself, because my voice is so low and gravelly and strange-sounding that they can't hear me or understand what I'm saying.
/>   I used to think that I was special--special in a good way, like my mother used to tell me. I remember being maybe three or four, in my speech therapist's office, feeling my mother's fingers against my chin as she gently moved my face so I was looking at her lips in the mirror. Watch me, Joy. I was born premature, with mild hearing loss in one ear and moderate loss in the other, so it took me longer to talk than most kids. In nursery school, I'd get frustrated when people couldn't understand me. I'd scream, throw things, hurl myself onto the ABC carpet and pound it with my feet and fists. My mother came to school with me every day. She never got mad at me or lost her patience. She'd wait until I stopped crying. She'd wipe my face and give me apple juice in a sippie cup and lead me over to the easels or the Story Corner, where she'd settle me in her lap and read me a book. At home, we'd practice in front of the mirror, her eyes on my eyes and her fingers on my chin. You're doing so well! You're doing just great! Say "mmm." She'd sit with me in her lap, pressing one of my hands against my throat so I could feel the sound's vibration, and my other hand on my lips, so I could feel the air streaming out of my nose. Say "mmm." Say "mmm." Say "Mama."

  We'd walk home together at lunchtime, and if it had been a hard day, I would get a treat. We'd go to Pearl Art Supplies for water-color paint or new buttons, or to Rita's for water ice when it was warm, and my mother would scoop me into her arms and say that she was so proud, that I was so special. It has taken me all of this time to learn that I'm really not. The only reason anyone in the real world thinks I'm special is because of my hearing aids and my weird voice and because once, a long time ago, my mother wrote a book.

  "Can I go now?" asked Tamsin. She had one hand curled around Ghost World, her finger marking her place.

  "I'm only on two. Two," I said. "She and my father are disgusting." They laugh together all the time. They kiss when they think I'm not watching. They speak a private language, one made up of all the movies and TV shows they've seen and the magazines they've read. One of them will say something like "Can't we all just get along?" or "Lewis Lapham has gone too far this time," and the other one will start laughing. "Who is Lewis Lapham? What's so funny about a sweatshirt that just says 'College'?" I'll ask, and they'll try to explain, but it's like when I was little again: Even though I can hear the words, they don't come together in a way that makes sense.